{"id":11398,"date":"2021-05-13T03:01:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T03:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=11398"},"modified":"2021-05-13T03:01:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T03:01:01","slug":"greens-announce-50-tax-on-australias-obscene-pandemic-profiteers-in-response-to-budget-that-leaves-young-people-and-climate-worse-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/05\/13\/greens-announce-50-tax-on-australias-obscene-pandemic-profiteers-in-response-to-budget-that-leaves-young-people-and-climate-worse-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens announce 50% tax on Australia\u2019s obscene pandemic profiteers in response to budget that leaves young people and climate worse off"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian Greens have used their Budget in Reply speech to announce a new tax on extreme profiteering by billionaires during the pandemic.
\nThe new tax, which only applies to the 122 richest Australians, will raise $29 billion. It will be taxed on the amount their wealth increased between March 2020 and March 2021.
\nWhile everyone else struggled during the pandemic, Australia\u2019s billionaires increased their wealth by $90 billion, a 34% increase, for a total of $417b between them. The one-off levy, similar to a proposal from Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey in the United States, would see billionaires pay a tax of 50% on the gains made during the pandemic.
\nGreens Leader Adam Bandt said billionaires in Australia made out like bandits during the pandemic, often off the back of receiving public subsidies like JobKeeper, and the tax was urgently needed to make our country fairer and recover from the pandemic by cheating secure jobs and providing people with a better life.
\nThe Greens Leader will say in his speech that the profiteering tax would address what the Budget missed by helping restore funding to Australia\u2019s decimated university sector, start building 1 million new public housing homes and getting Australia\u2019s transport fleet running on renewable electricity.
\nExcerpts from Mr Bandt\u2019s Budget in reply speech, to be delivered Wednesday evening:<\/strong>
\n1 in 3 big corporations pays no tax and billionaires increased their wealth by a third during the pandemic, but this Budget fails to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share, grows inequality and fast-tracks the climate crisis.
\nIn the middle of a climate crisis, the Budget finds $11.4b for fossil fuels this year and another $1.1b for new coal and gas projects, but nothing for electrifying transport, a sector responsible for 16% of our emissions.
\nMeanwhile, it\u2019s champagne for the billionaires and real pain for everyone else.
\nIn fact, this Budget is based on real wages going backwards for two years.
\nIt\u2019s tax cuts for billionaires and handouts for big corporations, but wage cuts for workers and poverty for the unemployed.
\nDuring the pandemic, while the rest of us were locked down and wages were flat, the billionaires made out like bandits.
\nWhile young people went backwards, Australia\u2019s billionaires\u2019 wealth grew faster than billionaires anywhere else in the world.
\nAustralia\u2019s billionaires are similar to wartime profiteers, who while the rest of the nation is making a sacrifice on a collective effort, lined their own pockets with cash.
\nGina Rinehart more than doubled her wealth during the pandemic, and is now worth $36 billion. Twiggy, Rinehart and Clive Palmer increased their personal wealth by 141% between them during the pandemic.
\nThis extreme wealth generation is obscene. We are creating a class of oligarchs who have too much power.
\nEveryone in this country deserves free childcare and early education. Everyone deserves to be able to access Medicare backed dental and mental care. Everyone deserves to live in an affordable home. And everyone deserves a well paid, secure job.
\nBut instead, we have billions in handouts for big corporations and billionaires. We have Kerry Stokes\u2019s new private jet and we have Gerry Harvey refusing to pay back JobKeeper while dishing out shareholder profits and CEO bonuses.
\nWe can fix this.
\nAt the next election, a swing against the Morrison government will most likely put the Greens in balance of power in both Houses of Parliament.
\nThe Greens are a few hundred votes away from holding the balance of power.
\nIn the balance of power after the next election, the Greens will bring in a series of new taxes on billionaires.
\nWe recently announced a 6% ongoing billionaire\u2019s tax. It\u2019s urgent that we make them pay. They won\u2019t like it. They love not paying their fair share.
\nAnd today we announce our next plan, to tax the extreme wealth made during the pandemic.
\nWe will introduce a 50% tax on the increase in their wealth during the last twelve months. This tax only applies to 122 people is worth $29 billion.
\nIt\u2019s only half of the increases in wealth billionaires made during the pandemic, a crisis where we all made sacrifices, and will be used to benefit all 25 million people in this country.
\nAgain, the billionaires won\u2019t like it, but I don\u2019t care.
\nI care about the 25 million. The ones who were forced to raid their super. Or denied government support because they worked in universities, the arts and cultural industries. Or those who were in casual and insecure work.
\nI care about the people who fought to keep a roof over their heads, not the Australian billionaires who bought new jets.
\nI want to see the university sector and the arts sector restored and expanded, not further decimated.
\nI want to see us start to build back better with renewable infrastructure that can replace our dirty coal and gas export industry so that we can electrify Australia\u2019s transport and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
\nAnd let\u2019s build 1 million new public housing homes for low income earners, while creating thousands of new apprenticeships in the process.
\nTo fight the climate crisis and become a renewable energy superpower, we need to electrify our nation, and critical to the transformation is the electrification of our transportation system.
\nBut this Budget has no money to support the shift to electric vehicles. 60% of the Budget\u2019s new infrastructure spend is on roads, but not one dollar for charging infrastructure on those roads.
\nThe rest of the world is moving to electric vehicles and Australia is not ready.
\nThe revenue raised by the billionaires tax would help fund investments in charging infrastructure for our road network and for businesses and public buildings.
\nTransforming our transportation networks and building our nation, ensuring that when petrol car makers switch to electric over the next decade that Australia is ready.
\nAt the next election we will kick the Liberals out, and we will push the next government to go further and faster.
\nFurther and faster on tackling the billionaires.
\nFurther and faster on pushing up wages and creating secure jobs.
\nFurther and faster on tackling the climate crisis.
\nThis is the fight for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian Greens have used their Budget in Reply speech to announce a new tax on extreme profiteering by billionaires during the pandemic. The new tax, which only applies to the 122 richest Australians, will raise $29 billion. It will be taxed on the amount their wealth increased between March 2020 and March 2021. While … Continue reading “Greens announce 50% tax on Australia\u2019s obscene pandemic profiteers in response to budget that leaves young people and climate worse off”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}